The Foreign Service Journal, December 2006

Within a few short weeks in late June and early July of this year, both movements carried out acts of war against Israel, invading its territory to kill and abduct members of the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF responded with a prolonged air and ground counterattack. In mid-August, a ceasefire ended more than a month’s fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, after which a United Nations force, known as UNIFIL II, was introduced under U.N. Secur- ity Council Resolution 1701. As of early November, low- level conflict continued between Israel and Hamas, and with other militants in the Gaza Strip. All these developments, and more, that took place dur- ing and after the war constituted the weekly fare of bitter lemons.org , a joint Israeli-Palestinian Web-based dialogue project launched in 2001 with considerable support from the State Department’s Wye River People-to-People Program. Produced and co-edited by the author together with Ghassan Khatib (see p. 29), a former Palestinian Authority minister, bitterlemons is unique in several respects: for having some 100,000 well-placed readers in the region and beyond, for the coverage its articles receive from Web and print media, and for its format. Rather than looking for agreement on the issues and risk narrowing its readership to the peace camp niche, bit- terlemons thrives on diversity, airing views that range from Hamas to the settlers. Every week Khatib and I select a new topic of controversy; each addresses it in op-ed for- mat, and each solicits an op-ed by a compatriot with dif- ferent views. Because the two of us agree on little beyond the need for bitterlemons and the way to run it smoothly, the result is usually four very different views on the issue at hand. Fallout from the War What, then, are we trying to prove? That political antagonists can deal with their differences in a civilized manner. That is the bitterlemons message. In this article we shall briefly review the key strategic developments of the immediate postwar situation, then examine how bit- terlemons dealt with them. One important and almost immediate Palestinian- related corollary to the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza was the shelving by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of his plan to withdraw unilaterally from parts of the West Bank. Israel felt it had been attacked unprovoked across two internationally recognized boundaries after having with- drawn unilaterally across them; this called into question at least the Gaza model of withdrawing both the settlements and the army without prior agreement with a viable Palestinian government. In both the Israeli and Palestinian arenas, some of the ramifications of the Lebanon ceasefire appeared to be negative, both militarily and politically, while a few seemed to open prospects for possible new diplomatic departures. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 at least temporarily ended the fighting. After some initial international fumbling, Italian, French and other forces began to arrive in the south, and Israel was able to with- draw its troops from southern Lebanon and end its embargo of Lebanese ports. Hezbollah’s leadership was contrite, Lebanon’s forceful. At least in these early stages, 1701 appeared to be working. Yet, despite the enthusiasm of some European leaders who volunteered their troops for UNIFIL II in Lebanon, 1701 is a problematic model for an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire in Gaza. In Lebanon, an international force was introduced to support a weak government that at least had good intentions, even as it feared the consequences of complying with U.N. demands to disarm Hezbollah. A similar measure in Gaza would support an even weaker — but also extremist —Hamas government that is boycotted by the international community. Nor is the geography of tiny, overpopulated Gaza conducive to deploying interna- tional forces on a large scale to create a buffer zone. Finally, non-U.N. forces, such as the U.S.-led Multi- national Force and Observers on the Sinai Peninsula and the European Union monitors in Gaza, appear to have a greater chance of success in the Israel-Arab context than U.N. forces like UNIFIL, whether enhanced or not. On the other hand, Israel’s military achievements in Gaza (Qassam rocket firings were radically reduced; large numbers of militants were killed, against few Israeli casu- alties) and the prospect of a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement appeared to obviate the immediate need for anything but humanitarian international interven- tion there. Nor did Israeli forces reoccupy Gaza as they did, however briefly, southern Lebanon. In other words, F O C U S 28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6 Yossi Alpher is co-editor of the bitterlemons family of Internet publications. He is a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and a former senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.